Ma-Yi Theater Company
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Ma-Yi Theater Company is a professional, not-for-profit, Obie Award winning theater company based in New York City that was founded in 1989. Ma-Yi Theater is headed by Executive Director Jorge Ortoll and Artistic Director Ralph Peña. Some of its more notable productions include:
- Alice Tuan's Last of the Suns
- Ralph Peña's Flipzoids
- Sung Rno's wAve
- Lonnie Carter's The Romance of Magno Rubio.
In 2006, Ma-Yi Theater Company's production of Warren Leight's "No Foreigners Beyond This Point" received a Drama Desk nomination for Best Play.
Other projects slated for development in 2006 include Han Ong's "Suitcase Trilogy," a new Vampire play by Ping Chong and Jessica Hagedorn, and a showcase of nine original full-length plays by members of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab. "Savage Stage: Plays by Ma-Yi Theater Company" is an anthology of selected new works developed and produced by the company since its founding. Edited by Ma-Yi's Literary Manager, Joi Barrios, the anthology is scheduled for publication in August 2006.
Ma-Yi Theater Company is a participant in "Artography: Arts in a Changing America", a pilot program launched by LINC (Leveraging Investments In Creativity) that seeks to map new arts practices in the United States resulting from demographic shifts.
[edit] History
Ma-Yi did not start out to be an Asian-American theatre company. Founded in 1989 by Chito Jao Garces (artistic director), Ralph Pena, Margot Lloren, Ankie Frilles, Luz de Leon, Isolda Oca, Arianne Recto, Cristina Sison, and Bernie Villanueva, its first productions were Filipino, Filipino-American plays, or adaptations. Also instrumental in the founding of Ma-Yi was Chris Millado, who served as advisor to their first performance and returned to write and direct for the group. Jorge Ortoll joined the company a year later in 1990, and became its executive director in 1991, the same year that Ma-Yi became a non-profit company and established a Board of Directors. Ralph Peña and Betty Mae Piccio became co-artistic directors in 1995, and when Piccio moved to Philadelphia in 1996, Peña became its sole artistic director. Ortoll and Peña have, since then, organized a support staff that has included Lourdes Obillo as accountant, Vince Hokia as techinical director, Daniel Rech as marketing manager, and Andrew Eisenmann and Suzette Porte as associate artistic directors.
For the past fifteen years since its inception, Ma-Yi has also benefited from the involvement of Filipino theatre artists based in New York – production designer and director Loy Arcenas, composer Fabian Obispo, veteran actors Ching Valdez-Aran and Mia Katigbak, and novelist and playwright Jessica Hagedorn. Other Filipino artists and writers have also been involved with Ma-Yi: director Behn Cervantes, playwright and actor Rody Vera, and playwright Marina Feleo-Gonzalez; National Artist of the Philippines for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera and Virgilio Almario, scholars Preachy Legasto, Nicanor Tiongson, and Roland Tolentino, and choreographer-dancer Potri Rangkamanis. In 2003, while in the United States as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California Irvine, Joi Barrios joined the group as its Literary Manager.
In 1998, Ma-Yi Theater expanded its mission to include works by other, non-Filipino, Asian American writers. This move was largely prodded by the company's recognition of the need for more developmental venues for new Asian American plays.
Some of Ma-Yi Theater's recent productions include: Sides: The Fear is Real, The Romance of Magno Rubio (Obie Award), No Foreigners Beyond This Point (Drama Desk Nomination), and Trial By Water.
The Ma-Yi Writers Lab was founded in 2004 by Sung Rno in connection with the TCG/NEA Playwright's Residence Program, and is currently led by Co-Directors Qui Nguyen and Lloyd Suh. The Lab is Ma-Yi's resident company of emerging professional writers, and represents the largest group of professional Asian American playwrights ever assembled.
